Power To The People

Article in Israeli paper ‘the Marker’ 2007 – click through for the article in English

I didn’t want to go too far back in time when starting this site, as nothing dates quote as quickly as articles about the future of media, however this one is quite interesting as it shows where my head was at in 2007. The angle that TV should stop fearing digital and embrace it has proven fairly timeless and indeed that is exactly what TV has done. I was getting heavy usage out of the William Gibson quote that year: ‘The future is here, it isn’t evenly distributed yet’, and it still crops up from time to time. This was adopted as the title of the article.

At that time I was very much using the relaunched Doctor Who as an ‘avatar’ or perhaps a muse for embracing digital change. I certainly did that theme to death over the next few years, so apologies to people about that. I think after the ‘Impossible Astronaut’ record time shift press release, I should return Doctor Who to being something I enjoy rather than having it bleed into my work at well. At the time I was also very much in thrall to my Archos portable video player, with the iPad still three years away.

The interview was done after I spoke at the Top Media event in Tel Aviv at an amazing venue that was effectively a nightclub on a beach. The presentation was called “Power To the People” with a Che Guevara theme – one of the less subtle presentations about the Digital Revolution. I stand by most of what I said at the time, which is reassuring as in hindsight much of it was person opinion rather than particularly evident in data, but sometimes you have to go with gut feel.

On the left above is the front page of the article. I was quite surprised that ‘the Marker’ turned out to be the business section of Haaretz, the main national newspaper as I thought I was just talking to the trade press. Assuming most readers don’t read Hebrew, click on the image for the article in English.